Abstract

Primary school students of 1980s’ Turkey remember their teachers in various aspects. Uncovering their reminiscences lets researchers see what factors become decisive in recontructing primary school teachers in the memories of their students. The priority of this paper is to discover the reasons why the 1980s primary school students remember their teachers and find out if the place (center-periphery as a variable) where they got their primary school education has any effect on their remembrances. The method of the study is oral history methodology that has a unique power because it allows the researchers to reach the experiences of masses whose voices have been hidden, excluded and living on the margin of power relations. The research group of the study is the primary school students of the 1980s in different regions of Turkey. The people chosen for the research group were receahed by the snow ball method used in oral history. The structured interviews were performed with 15 men and 15 women via a recording device apart from two trial interviews in order to collect data for the study. During the formation of the text, despite using the original forms of the interviews, the original names of the interviewed people were changed. According to the findings, the students are able to recall their teachers in their narratives due to simply being their teachers, disciplined, punished, loved and discriminated by them. Moreover, even though the findings display that where they got their primary school education did not have direct effect on remembering their teachers, the contents of their narratives do differ to some extent because of the place where they got their primary school education.

Key words: Primary school students, oral history, educational experiences, primary school teachers.